“Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway was formed conspicuously complicated design with many curves and multiple grade separations. Today, 310 kilometers of highway network has been built and became very unique urban expresway, with no similarities seen in the world.”

Those columns and connecting beams could be anything – trade routes, jungle bridges, whatever – but somehow they are precisely one thing. We’re building Tokyo’s spidery highways!

It all clicks into satisfying place with that description and a moment’s play.

Without a single character or ‘zany’ mechanic, Tokyo Highway pulsates with its own distinct tone and sense of place. It’s elegantly abstract: it cuts to the heart of things.

Mechanics

Players have a bunch of thick grey disks (pillars), thick yellow disks (junctions) and very thin wooden beams (roads). They also have tiny, brightly colored cars for scoring.

Each turn, a single stack of pillars of variable height is placed anywhere on the table, free-form style, so long as a linking road connects it to the rest of the player’s network.

Points are scored each time a road crosses above or below the opponent’s highway. This is where those cars come in handy, and are carefully placed on the beams to keep track.